Department of Women and Gender Studies, Savitribai Phule Pune University.

Brainstorming meeting on 13th and 14th March to discuss the archiving of histories of Women studies in India.

Dr. Madhura Lohokare facilitated a workshop in the Department of Women and Gender Studies with MA students across the departments of Social Sciences. Through this workshop students learned how to make effective arguments while doing research.

The Department held a workshop on 'Academic Reading and Writing' facilitated by Sayantan Datta, Assistant professor of Practice at the Centre for Writing and Pedagogy, Krra University, on 6th and 7th March ,2026.
Sayantan spoke to MA students across several departments about the process of research. As a part of the workshop, students learned how to write effective arguments and annotated bibliographies.

The Department of Women and Gender Studies and The Department of English, Savitribai Phule Pune University, on 12th March, 2026, jointly organized an illuminating conversation titled ‘The Search For Our Activist Pasts’ with the feminist writer, publisher, activist, and Padma Shri Urvashi Butalia.

The conversation centred on tracing the histories of women’s movements- some that came about by challenging the patriarchy in left movements and others that were located in the ordinary, in the everyday. From the Therigatha poems, Mukta Salve’s essay to the book ‘Sharir ki jaankari,’ she spoke about the role of such literature in making the voices from the margins heard and reshaping the women’s movements.
She narrated several stories, among which was the story of Satyarani Bala who fought against dowry deaths. Butalia’s changing understanding of research, its impact on people’s lives and the role of the researcher allowed her to appreciate the contributions of such women who may not have seen justice in their own lives, but managed to mobilise many for the cause of women’s freedom.
She also opened up about her emotional journey in writing ‘The Other Side of Silence,’ speaking about the heavy responsibility of being the custodian of people’s stories. Thus memory and oral narratives, according to her, become useful tools for not only making more voices heard, but also for documenting alternative histories of significant events like the Partition.

Many students enthusiastically asked her questions about research methodologies, research ethics, the voice of the researcher, the discomfort of emotions and subjectivity in research, and the politics of translation and she highlighted the need to engage with research methods like oral narratives, and to use the voice of the researcher responsibly to center the power dynamics and emotional burdens inherent in the process of research.



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The Department of Women and Gender Studies and Department of History, Savitribai Phule Pune University jointly organized an insightful lecture on 11th March, 2026 on 'Decolonizing the Curriculum in Neo-liberal Times', delivered by Dr. Radhika Govinda. Dr. Govinda is currently with the Department of Sociology at the School of Social and Political Sciences, University of Edinburgh, UK, and her work sheds light on the importance of understanding gender politics at the intersections of caste, class, race/ethnicity and religion in women’s and social movements, in development policies and practice, in everyday social relations in rural and urban spaces, and in the global dynamics of knowledge production.

The lecture was attended by the students, faculty and researchers from the departments. While illustrating her own experiences, Dr. Govinda explained what happens when one brings in the practices of decolonization into classrooms and curriculum, focusing on affective impact on the students and the teacher. She pushed the participants to critically engage with the concept and practice of intersectionality in everyday lives, and therefore bringing in the complexities of identities to argue that decolonization as a practice is a continuous process which requires rigorous labor of bringing in practices, concepts and complexities of everyday experiences.
We would like to present our heartiest gratitude to Dr. Radhika Govinda for such an engaging lecture and bringing these important issues of decolonization, identities, praxis and politics of knowledge production.

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